HSBC has been forced to take a larger writedown in its global banking and markets business in the first quarter than it took for the whole of last year after taking a $2.6bn (€1.7bn) hit on its credit-related portfolios, but it said this morning that growth in emerging markets helped counter the bad news.

Writedowns in the global banking and markets division for the first three months of the year were up $500m on the total for 2007, which HSBC blamed on the “continued credit market disruption”.